Let It Go, in Kalimantan

Written on the Sekonyer River (on Sunday 5th June 2016), about Saturday 4th & Sunday 5th June. Photos to follow with any luck!  

“Look at where we woke up!” I say to Emma as we sit perched on two bean bags, aboard a boat floating on the Sungai (river) Sekonyer, next to a sign which says:

 

‘No Feeding Of Wildlife!
(includes orangutans and macaques)’

We are on a beautiful wooden (long?) boat called ‘Let It Go’ cue Emma: “Our boat is better than their boat.” Which is the right conclusion whichever boat you see. It turns out that ‘Let It Go’ is more about a sentiment to ‘let it fly to find it’s way and do it’s best’, rather than forget about it, it doesn’t matter. This will make more sense when you hear about Fardi.

‘Let It Go’ is two decks deep with a painted orange top deck and bright blue triangle nose. Fardi – who built up this business through patience and hard graft – did it up himself and wanted to keep the natural wooden decor and it really is so handsome: then envy of all the river with it’s red and purple beanbags out front, shaded middle section with lazy beds, table and chairs, little sink with mirror and hot drink facilities. It’s a unique vessel which deserves a mention before the spectacular jaw-dropping external surroundings push their voracious way to the front.

The ‘No Feeding of Wildlife!’ sign is on one side of the bank next to the gang plank entrance to an orangutan feeding station. As we sit and consider how brilliant we are for making it here and how god damn lucky we are to be able to do something like this, a tiny orange butterfly with 1920s fringes, frets around Emma and a black and white spotted one with a wingspan ten times as big, flutters in the direction of the opposite bank. Our alarm call this morning came at 5 as our primate neighbours also woke with the sun, bringing heavy swings and crashes from the tree-tops, sploshes from up high of I’m not exactly sure what and a repetitive melodic 123 (bird or human?) whistle (I find out later that it was probably a Blue Eared Barbet, from that other bank.

We landed Pangkalan Bun airport early yesterday and were picked up by Husni, our tour guide who whisked us off to Kumai (‘come here’ in the local dialect) which perches on the river of the same name.

Emma needs a new hat, having realised she’d left hers somewhere between the plane landing at Surabaya, last night’s hotel and our return to terminal 2 for the Trigana flight this morning. So off we went to the market to get one of those triangular ones made from bamboo which the farmers wear in the rice fields. We come away with two, because I couldn’t resist and it’s definitely one to add to my burgeoning collection at home.

Kumai’s local market is an eye popping feast. Rammed with every little trinket, food stuff and spice anyone in the town could ever shop for. Fully finned fish fresh and ready to cook, naked chicken bodies, piles of vegetables we’ve never seen – or seen the size of – before. It’s awash with colour and wonderful beautiful people who seem to smile and ebb out of every crevice.

Husni tells us that they don’t often see foreigners at the market. We are entirely charmed even as the sweat trickles down from neck to back and all the way down the back of our legs, unseen in our zipped on trekking trousers. We pause at a flaking street stall on wooden wheels and he buys us a sugar cane drink each and we suck the sweet sap up through matching straws as we drift back to meet the boat and Fardi.

Emma has not stopped coveting Fardi’s painted monkey-face t-shirt (created by his friend and sadly for her the only one in the world) since. He explains he’s just speaking to his wife of three months as she is far away: we wave and say hello via camera phone. She wants to hear what he says to his guests so he asks if it’s okay for her to listen. (Of course). She’s on Doctor training for a year and they only had a few days together before she went.

He makes us a Java coffee. Here in Indonesia (which by the way sounds like Tunisia when a local says it) you tip the water right into fine ground Java coffee-powder, stir in sugar or milk (condensed for the boat – no sugar needed) and wait for the specs to settle muddily down before drinking. We swirling black magic occurs as he tells us this boat is now our home and we’ll be looked after by Husni (tour guide), Eson (captain), Eno (assistant) and L’is (cook).

We are early (first time for everything) and another couple won’t be here until 10am so he sits and tells us about his love and his life. He has built this venture which is now known as Orangatan Houseboat Tours. It has taken time and dreams but it’s a good, responsible and impressive way to make a living. He, his mum and his sister once lived in a 4 metre square space gifted by his aunt. When he was younger, he found it hard seeing those people who had so many of the things he didn’t. But he knows how lucky he was too thanks to the family who held them close. He studied (hard) and went on to spend three years working at Rimba Lodge. He would climb onto a tall tree platform to call his (first) girlfriend from this remote outpost, when he could. He saved and learnt and worked his way up. He bought his first boat and now he has several, jointly owned by family and friends. He only employs local people from the village (he must sustain twenty livelihoods) and is adamant about keeping things as sustainable and eco-friendly as possible. Our boat is the best boat in all of these ways. As we start on our adventure, Fardi waves from the bank (Emma: “Get a picture of his t-shirt!” and we’re both just a little sad he’s not coming with us, this sweet and genuine man).

After our early start and just a few tired mouthfuls of banana muffin at the airport, we agree to an early lunch and are pretty much presented with a banquet. They cook up the tempe we picked up on our cycle ride through the villages, along with stir fried vegetables, honey something tofu, fat giant prawns and two more plates of delight. Such culinary wizardry from one knee height stove!

It all feels quite colonial, being chauffeured down the river, sat at a table, literally being waited on. We had not expected that – we thought that maybe the crew would be on the same level – literally – as us and that we could chat and I dunno, play cards or something but it’s very much set up for guests (probably the usual being romantically inclined/mildly adventurous couples) to have their quiet time undisturbed. This would be an incredible thing to do with the love of your life after all but we kind of wish they’d put themselves on the same deck as us – we don’t want to invade their space and make them uncomfortable (perhaps they feel the same way). Even if it does feel a little bizarre to us, coming from the culture we do, we’re thrilled to be here, and keep pinching/back patting ourselves because it hardly seems real to be here.

Right now for example (fast forward to Sunday night) I’m sat at the little table, two candles in front of me on our little table adorned with a map of Kalimantan (Husni earlier pointed out that we are on Tanjung Puting right in the bottom south west corner), two mosquito nets beyond that, with curtains of black night either side.

The deep dark at the bottom of each black side is smooth flowing river surface and the lid on the dark is pin pricked by a million bright bintang (stars) above. The whole scene is edged by circada and cricket song which reaches your ears from every single last angle of the leafy dark. Every so often we hear the plop of a fish (or is it the swish of a crocodile’s tail or the cup of a monkey’s hand: some can swim!)… and there goes the proboscis monkey’s groaning at each other as their sleepy reverie is disturbed by who knows what in the top of the trees. I wonder as I tip tap tap here on my blue lit netbook (which must be lighting up my face) just how many sets of eyes are looking towards me, between two diminishing candles, at the glowing centre of the Let It Go.

I’ve put Emma in charge of remembering monkey species and – as our first day already seems an eon ago and I’m struggling to remember what we saw first – she informs me that the first clutch we saw were long tailed macaques.

Me: “What do you call a group of monkeys?”

Her: “A troop, I think. I’m not sure“.

They swing and just hang out as you do, at the side of the jungle river, shooting the breeze. A little bit further along and we encounter the proboscis monkeys with their big long noses.

“Like you” says Husni and I can’t hold it against him. Firstly because he doesn’t mean it as an insult and secondly because he just does have the tiniest nose in the world compared to me. More macaques, more proboscis and then Emma almost squeals as her eyes focus behind some swaying branches and she spies her first flash of orange hair and then a whole orangutan. I manage to get a photo of her with him behind, before a second boat noises up to us and breaks the spell. Back we go to our bean bags at the front of a boat, gliding into the mouth of the jungle. High five. This. Is. Amazing.

We slept moored at the second feeding station’s jetty last night, which is where I wrote the first paragraph of this blog entry this morning. There was a night-walk with a ranger before that. Houdin, the park ranger, along with his chatty little grey backed cat named Patan, escorted us (the grey-backed one occasionally getting under our feet but mainly assisting in pointing out tarantula holes (+leg), moths, giant ants – and eventually Albert – an orangutan who had been asleep next to the feeding station and looks about as unimpressed about being woken up as Emma tends to.

A mosquito high pitches next to my ear just as I’m dropping off to sleep. I’m immediately awake again. How ironic that jungle recordings are always used on meditation podcasts, but, really, when you’re in the jungle all you do is think ‘oh god. now. where exactly did that noise come from? And actually, what is is?’. So along with the yellow dawn-lit morning, it was a dramatic splosh from the opposite bank that woke me up, and then a dull thud on the curtain-drawn-bank-side of the boat. Both noises, could be human but could also easily be.. more likely be… something else. So it’s now 9.40pm and I’ve been up since 5. Husni didn’t even get up until 6.30 – perhaps I’m more of a control freak than I realised. Definitely.

Today has literally been stuffed full of orangutans. And mixed emotions.

It’s a total wonder to see such powerful expressively faced beings so close.

Some of the baby ones have punk rocker hair, the males have these beasting shoulders which you would never want to square up to (the lead male has the strength of nine men we’re told!), and on the few occasions that the infants do climb down from their mothers back, their mother will hold tight onto their arms (“you are going nowhere young man”). The interaction between them is just so human and.. relatable. As soon as the most dominant male of the moment arrives, the rest of them scarper carrying as many bananas in their mouth, hands and feet as ape’ingly possible.

At one point there’s about thirty of us who simultaneously break into laughter when a cheeky gibbon swings down to the feeding station on elastic arms, descending the branches with the same sort of purpose as a gymnast aiming for a full set of ’10’s on the bards and the sort of gravity inherent to those silver balls click-click-click-on-wire-balls.He’s down to the platform when the big guy’s back is turned before you can say “samu samu” (you’re welcome). He quickly positions himself supine in the middle of the platform (“What? I’ve been here all along.”) and waits for the moment……….big guy turns back around, gibbon grabs five bananas, lifts them double high above his head, and makes a break for it – elbows akimbo – back to his tree.

Success! He scrambles back to his Y shaped look out post and hunkers on down on his sweet yellow treasures, dropping discarded skin onto the jungle floor without a second thought for anything non-fruit.

All I can keep saying is “Amazing”. But the word is a poor attempt at doing it justice.

The total wonder of this experience and the amazement we’re feeling has a side that’s darker than the river’s black beneath. Deforestation (mainly for palm oil but for other more traditional treasures too) is happening everywhere around Borneo.

Husni points out the small left hand side half of ‘Cape Nipple’ (true translation of Tanjung Puting) to the west of Sunai Sekonyer and says that the pillaging (my word not his) is going on pretty much everywhere apart from this little bit where we’re privileged enough to be right now. He and those who work in tourism are trying to protect their country, their livelihoods and their inheritance by buying hectares of land (Rp5,000,000) in an attempt to prevent greedy companies razoring them to the ground. Thousands of species, some of which exist only here and many of which are still undiscovered will be wiped out.

The jungle’s – and by default the world’s – ecosystem is being rapidly burnt away by greed and stupidity.

The hugeness of it smartly hits me square in the face as we start to read the boards at the Camp Leakey Information Centre and by the time we make it back into the damp sunny jungle air I’m overwhelmed. “Are you crying?” asks Husni. I nod. “I’m an emotional creature” I say, excusing myself.

It’s just so sad – I can’t help it. Experiencing the jaw-dropping wonder of our magical world and then face the realisation that soon it will all be gone. Everything we see here with all it’s heady colour and noise and enchantment.

Like it never existed at all. But all the more tragic because it did. It’s all just so careless.

“Hati hati” we learnt earlier which means careful (I tripped over a vine root and my own ankle). But “hati” by itself, means hurt: hurt in your heart. Appropriate Bahasa to have learnt today.